Rev. Rebecca M Heilman-Campbell
Selected Verses: Luke 1:46 – 55
Each year we hang stockings, light candles, purchase gorgeous wrapping paper and tie each red bow tight. We embrace the beauty and the sentiment of this Season of Waiting, sometimes forgetting the traditional story is exhausting, messy, and a bit scandalous. If any book represents the scruffiness of our story of waiting, it’s the book, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. Let me tell you, in Robinson’s world, it is well known that Alice Wendleken plays Mary every year. She is “so smart, so neat and clean, and most of all so holy looking.” So, it came as a surprise when cigar-smoking Imogene Herdmans, along with her criminal siblings, crashed the Christmas play rehearsals and asks to be Mary. Robinson writes, “Imogene…didn’t know that Mary was supposed to be acted out in one certain way – sort of quiet and dreamy and out of this world. The way Imogene did it, Mary was a lot like Mrs. Santoro at the Pizza Parlor…loud and bossy. ‘Get away from the baby!” she yelled at Ralph who was Joseph. And she made the Wise Men keep their distance [too].”
Even though Imogene subtly mellows out as the story continues and is not as violent towards Joseph at the end, Mary still did not come across as the dreamy-like, meek and mild figure people expected Mary to be. Robinson, again, writes, “(Imogene and Ralph, AKA Mary and Joseph) looked like people you see on the six o’clock news – refugees, sent to wait in some strange ugly place…(maybe) this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck in a barn by people who didn’t much care what happened to them. They couldn’t have been very neat and tidy either, but more like this Mary and Joseph” where Imogene’s veil was cockeyed, and Ralph’s hair stuck out. Maybe at first, shoplifting Imogene Herdmans was not the best choice for the character, Mary. But by the end of Robinson’s book, Imogene turned out to be the perfect child to represent the life of Mary and the holy child’s first days of life.
As one theologian writes, Mary is, you know “What’s-her-name from the wrong side of the tracks, the one with no education, no coming-out party…the one who is the object of a lot of sly talk and gossip.” Let’s be honest, all the characters are nowhere near the perfect, dreamy-like figure we see at Hobby Lobby. No, nothing about this story is meek and mild. Everything about this story is supposed to change us, challenge us, surprise us, turn us away from all we think we might know and towards Christ, coming in a form of a baby, born in a stable. In fact, it’s a story that takes place amongst the powerless and the most vulnerable of the first century community.
There is an eagerness, an intensity, even playfulness to our Scripture today, often titled as the Magnificat. After Mary hears from Gabriel that she will be giving birth to the Son of God, her first instinct is to be with a friend, her cousin, Elizabeth. And so, she, a young, unmarried, pregnant Palestinian-Jewish woman, travels “with haste,” as the Scripture says, to be with Elizabeth for an extended period of time. Perhaps Mary sought support, solidarity with Elizabeth since she, too, is with child. Perhaps she needed space and a safe place to stay after such big news. Perhaps she needed a mother-like figure to help her through the intensity of pregnancy. Whatever the reason, Mary’s first instinct is to travel to Elizabeth after Gabriel’s visit. And it’s there with Elizabeth that Mary’s song rings out with joy and fear, honor and courage.
Her song can be divided into two parts. First, her exultation of what God is doing for her and second, an exultation of what God is doing for Israel and its people. And yet, both parts share a common theme – to lift up the lowly and cast down those on high. This is not just a song of good feelings and praise for God, but like much of the Bible, it’s political. It challenges the leaders at be – the Herods and the Caesars. It’s a song about class. Listen to this verse – “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” This is a threat to the status quo. It’s not a queen with wealth and power giving birth to God, but a 14-year-old unmarried girl, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. God chooses her. And not only that, but if God chooses Mary, then God chooses all those who are vulnerable – the sick and the poor, the addicts and those unstable. Those beaten down by injustice and refuged in a new land. God is choosing to come into a world that isn’t shiny and full of riches, like most kings are born into, but into a world that is muddled, messy, just trying to make ends meet. What a story this is!
There’s a theology amongst academics and believers called liberation theology. This theology was coined in Latin America during the 60s as a response to severe poverty, power, persecutions, and social injustices. Gustavo Gutierrez, one of the founders of this theology felt the central tenet of this belief is that God carries a preferential care for the poor. That God and scripture prioritizes and chooses the well-being of the powerless, the most vulnerable of our world. The Magnificat, Mary’s song, and the image of Mary is central to this theology. The author Robert MacAfee Brown in his book Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes shares a conversation between a priest and his congregation in a South American country. Many Latin American priests gave up a well to do life to live with the poor, in the slums, making ends meet with different jobs to be in solidarity with their parishioners who were equally suffering. And so, this is the conversation between a priest and a congregation.
PRIEST: Today is September 12. Does that date mean anything special to you?
CONGREGATION: Three years ago, yesterday Allende was killed in Chile and the Chileans lost their leader. Now they are suffering repression. Allende’s death makes me think of the death of Martin Luther King.
PRIEST: Why do you think of the deaths of those two together?
CONGREGATION: Because both of them were concerned about oppressed peoples.
PRIEST: Doesn’t the day mean anything but death to you?
CONGREGATION: Well, today is also the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. So, this day also makes me think of her.
PRIEST: Is there any connection between Allende and Martin Luther King and Mary?
CONGREGATION: I guess that would depend on whether Mary was concerned about oppressed peoples too.
PRIEST: Let me read part of Mary’s song, the Magnificat, in the beginning of Luke’s Gospel: “God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich has sent empty away.”
CONGREGATION: Bravo! But that doesn’t sound at all like the Mary we hear about in the cathedral. And the Mary in the “holy pictures” certainly doesn’t look like a person who would talk that way.
PRIEST: Tell me about the Mary in the holy pictures.
CONGREGATION: Here she is. She is standing on a crescent moon. She is wearing a crown. She has rings on her fingers. She has a blue robe embroidered with gold.
PRIEST: That does sound like a different Mary from the Mary of the song! Do you think the picture has betrayed the Mary of the song?
CONGREGATION: The Mary who said that God “has exalted those of low degree” would not have left all of her friends so she could stand on the moon. Take her off the moon! The Mary who said that God “has put down the mighty from their thrones” would not be wearing a crown. Take off her crown! The Mary who said that God “has sent the rich empty away” would not be wearing rings on her fingers. Take off her rings! The Mary who said that God has “filled the hungry with good things” would not have left people who were still hungry to wear a silk robe embroidered with gold.
PRIEST: Very well. If you don’t like the way Mary looks in this picture, what do you think the Mary of the song would look like?
CONGREGATION: The Mary of the song would not be standing on the moon. She would be standing in the dirt and dust where we stand. The Mary of the song would not be wearing a crown. She would have on an old hat like the rest of us, to keep the sun from causing her to faint. The Mary of the song would not be wearing jeweled rings on her fingers. She would have rough hands like ours. The Mary of the song would not be wearing a silk robe embroidered with gold. She would be wearing old clothes like the rest of us. Father, it may be awful to say this, but it sounds as though Mary would look just like me! My feet are dirty, my hat is old, my hands are rough, and my clothes are torn.
PRIEST: No, I don’t think it is awful to say that. I think the Mary you have all described is more like the Mary of the Bible than the Mary we hear about in the cathedral and see in all the holy pictures.
CONGREGATION: I think she’d be more at home here in the slum with us than in the cathedral or the General’s Mansion. I think her message is more hopeful for us than for them. They are mighty and rich, but she tells them that God puts down the mighty from their thrones and sends the rich away empty. And we are at the bottom of the heap and very hungry, but she tells us that God exalts those of low degree and fills the hungry with good things.
PRIEST: Now let’s see, how could we begin to help God bring those things to pass?
And so, Trinity, how could we begin to help God bring those things to pass in Charlotte? As of October 2024, a little over 3,000 people experience homelessness in the city of Charlotte. A 27% increase from last year. Thankfully we have organizations and programs around the city to help here and there, but it does not solve the cycle of poverty that is so easy to fall in to. At Nations Ford Elementary School, a mission partner of ours for over 20 years, there are at least 30 families (this means children) who live in unstable housing – they are living in hotels, on the streets, or soon in Room in the Inn.
The past two years, we have seen more and more children at our own Room in the Inn program. Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools just launched a new program titled “At Home in CMS” to help get affordable housing for our educators and they are not the most vulnerable as I mentioned above! There’s a real concern for housing, education, and stability in our city. Trinity, how could we begin to help God bring housing, better education and stability to this city? To our children? It starts by taking Mary’s song, allowing it to fill up our lungs, our voices and sing its truth. It’s seeing God in the faces of those experiencing homelessness, those experiencing the detriment of mental health, those stuck in the cycle of poverty. It’s seeing Mary, the mother of God in the faces of those trying to get by, feeding their family, seeking a roof over their heads. To know that God chooses them too. That God is as much in their midst as God is in ours.
Luke portrays Mary of the song, Mary the mother of Jesus as strong, courageous, prophetic, and insightful for her time. It’s a song that rings out into our downtrodden world and yet after thousands of years still fills our hearts with a hopeful change and a courage. And so, Trinity, how could we begin to help God bring justice and holiness for all people in Charlotte?